Consumers use nail polishes to cosmetically enhance their nails or protect the nails from everyday conditions and stressors. However, these nail polish compositions are deficient in many respects, including their inability to provide long wear. Nail polishes which are known or currently available often exhibit deterioration, particularly in the form of chipping or peeling, in as few as one or two days. Such poor wear often forces consumers to remove their nail polish soon after original application and reapply additional nail polish to the nails. Consumers may also attempt to correct the unsightly appearance of the deteriorating nail polish by "touching-up" the areas of the nail which exhibit the deterioration, a practice which actually impairs the overall look of the nail polish. Finally, consumers may choose to do nothing about the deterioration and allow, for example, chipping and peeling to progress, resulting in nails which are not only minimally protected from the environment but are unsightly as well.
The art is replete with nail polish compositions which are promoted as having long wear, good adhesion, and/or resistance to chipping. While some nail polish compositions provide better wear than others, a need remains for nail polish compositions providing long wear.
Extreme examples of nail polish compositions which exhibit inadequate adhesion are those which are easily and completely peeled or stripped off the nails without the use of a solvent. See, e.g. EP 0,680,742, Mellul et al., assigned to L'Oreal.
Furthermore, other nail polish compositions are completely removable with water and, therefore, are not practical for normal use and do not provide adhesive and/or long wear properties under everyday conditions. See, e.g., JP 05-155,737, Itsumi et al., assigned to Yuho Chemical Co. Ltd. and EP 0,679,384, Ramin et al., assigned to L'Oreal.
Still further, nail polishes exhibiting moderate or good adhesion to the nail tend not to provide the hardness essential for avoidance of chipping resistance to abrasion. Similarly, known polishes which are tough tend to be too rigid and do not exhibit adequate adhesion to the nail. Without intending to be limited by theory, it is believed that adhesion is promoted by nail polish films which follow movement of the nail (e.g., bending) without cracking or other failure by dissipating energy. Tough films store energy instead of dissipating energy, in essence fighting against adhesion to the nail. Compatibility of these properties has been minimally explored in the nail polish art, resulting in nail polishes having adhesion or toughness/hardness, but not both.
It would therefore be desirable to provide nail polishes having improved wear properties including improved adhesion to the nail and the toughness or hardness essential for deflecting environmental stressors. The present inventors have surprisingly discovered nail polish kits which, when applied to mammalian nails, form films exhibiting both improved adhesion to the nail and improved toughness and/or hardness properties. By virtue of these properties, the present kits provide nail polish films exhibiting long wear at a superior level not provided by the nail polishes which are presently known and used.